


The World's Greatest Liars

by Enamoratrix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Ambiguity, Character Study, Drabble, Dubious Consent, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Original Character(s), Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3534566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enamoratrix/pseuds/Enamoratrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day in Ward's life, inside the cell.</p><p>(Please see end notes for warnings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World's Greatest Liars

The cell. Ten feet long, five feet across. Rubber floor. Three concrete walls and one electromagnetic barrier. One cot, government-issue: two feet wide, eight feet long, two feet tall, composed of a thick plastic frame coated in rubber. A white, nylon cover stretches over the frame, on which rests a four-inch-thick polyurethane sleep pad and a gray, wool-blend blanket. The toilet/sink/fountain unit is steel. On one wall, there are 30 tiny, almost undetectable holes. This is the shower. A panel on the floor lifts up to reveal a drain. Once a day, Ward is given a single-use packet of germicidal soap, a liquid wrapped in a dissolvable coating like people put in dishwashers. Water runs from the built-in shower for no more than three minutes.

Twice a day, he is given a cardboard tray with the minimum requirement of nutritional value, as allocated into three applesauce-like concoctions separated by cardboard partitions. He remembers eating it while getting hazed during S.H.I.E.L.D. training. The pink sauce, nicknamed Vita-Mush, is the mashed equivalent of one cup of fruit. The green sauce, nicknamed Veggie-Mush, equals two cups of vegetables. A thicker, brown sauce, congealed on the edges, contains about as much protein as a hamburger, plus 15 grams of fiber. Meaty-Mush. He’s used to a lot more. In addition to losing ten pounds, he’s started bruising like a peach. A real peach, not the kind of stuff they grind up into Vita-Mush. He bruises more now than he did living in the woods with Buddy.

The thought makes him spit out the food. Started to taste like copper. 

Agent Morse sighs, hands clasped behind her back. “I’m not leaving until you clean your tray.”

Ward swallows thickly as he looks down at the mush in front of him. It takes him a little longer than usual, but he manages to eat all of it. He’s swallowed more blood than that before.

When he’s finished, he places the tray by the electromagnetic barrier and moves away, back to the wall, like he does after every meal. The barrier shifts so she can take the tray. “See you in 18 hours.”

Ward likes Agent Morse. She just does what needs to be done. No more, and no less. She’s never tried to humiliate him or even intimidate him. Probably wouldn’t be the case if Coulson had tasked her with getting information out of him—just a feeling Ward gets about her—but still. She’s professional.

Second meal's over, which means he now has eight hours to kill before there’s a chance of seeing Skye. Can’t even be sure that’ll happen.

Any name in the world, and she picked Skye. A name that makes you think of sunlight, birds flying, open spaces. It makes sense for her. “Grant Ward” sounds like a government-funded psych facility. 

Only now, sometimes, when he hears his own name in his head, he hears the way Simmons and Fitz ground it out when they did their impersonations of him, dragging out the hard R’s and making the short A sound too high-pitched, a Brit’s idea of an American accent. Ward presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Not now. They’re upstairs in the main portion of the Bus. They’re—well, they’re alive.

There are no mirrors in the cell, and Ward’s thankful for that. He supposes that was the practical thing in terms of design, but still. May would’ve made every surface reflective. She’s razor sharp when she wants to be, which is often. She’d know that the last thing he needed these days was to have to look at himself. Not that he was overly fond of it before. His mother used to grab him by the neck and drag him over to the wall-length mirror, hold his face close to the glass and ask him what he saw. He always got it wrong. Once, he refused to answer, just kept his mouth shut. It seemed like the safest choice. His mother slammed his head against the mirror, hard enough that cracks spider-webbed from the point of impact all the way to the top of the frame. Ward, they later found out, had a small skull fracture. His ears were ringing, but he could still faintly hear her call out, “Arthur, come see what your son just did.”

For May, sex was mostly a stress-relieving exercise. Ward had thought that he was keeping her under control, making her feel some kind of affection toward him. He quickly realized that wasn’t the case. It was still useful to him, in a way. Intimacy—and he meant it literally, being physically close—had a way of revealing things about people. May was the definition of a closed book; as little as he gleaned from sleeping with her, it was probably more than he would’ve figured out otherwise.

When he used to think about it, in those rare moments alone in his bunk between missions, he’d imagined that Skye was the kind of person who would like to be held during sex. The kind of person who _enjoyed_ intimacy, even in the less literal sense. But now, when she comes to him, there’s no touching except where the act requires it. He just sort of leaves his hands at his sides and lets it go however it goes.

It reminds him of the first girl he ever slept with. Maddy. She was 17 and beautiful, with big, dark eyes and auburn hair. He was almost 14, but he looked older. He told her he was a junior visiting from out of state. They fooled around in the back of her car. He had no idea what he was doing, but she did. When she came, her head fell back, and there was light all haloed around her, and for almost a full minute, Ward felt warm and soft inside.

That fall, they ended up having study hall together. She was a senior assigned to mentor him as a freshman. For one moment, she lit up, seeing her summer diary romance right there in front of her again—until the awful realization came to her, and her eyes filled with tears. Ward couldn’t speak to her. He ran to the hallway just outside the nurse’s office and stuck his fingers down his throat so he could be sent home. 

Even when the spell was on him full force, he’d had to push down images of Maddy while he was with Lorelei. He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t feel anything but the need to please her, to keep her attention. Every now and then, he’d see Maddy’s face, the moment her sweet feelings toward him turned to bitter disappointment. He was desperate to keep that expression from Lorelei’s face. Once the spell was broken, no one mentioned the fact that she’d taken Ward to a hotel. Everyone must have known what happened, but no one talked about it. He was relieved. Talking never really helps anything. At best, it delays the inevitable.

On the other hand, things that Ward had taken for inevitabilities had been disproven. Things that had once been vast and unchangeable. Amazing, to see new possibilities in the world. Terrifying to go back to that cold, lightless place where he didn’t know what the rules were. Where the blows come without warning.

The first real doubt he’d felt about his mission as a double agent was when they were searching for Akela Amador, Coulson’s former protégée. “I can only imagine how painful this must be for you, sir,” he’d told Coulson. “Betrayed by someone you trained and believed in.” But Coulson refused to assume the worst of Amador. She’d failed the person who’d given her a second chance, who’d taken the time and the energy to arm her against the rest of the world. She was nothing and deserved nothing. Coulson should’ve been first in line to take away what was left of Amador’s life.

Ward had dedicated half his life to Garrett. Still, when Garrett died, Ward had felt like there was more air in the room. The way it felt to go back to full, sea level air after running at high altitude. He didn’t think it was supposed to feel like that. It hadn’t felt like that with Thomas. That felt…more like when you walk around in a torrential downpour, and your clothes get so soaked that everything feels heavy. 

The moment Thomas’s body took on too much water, so did Grant’s. 

Christian had always been able to see the doubt on Grant’s face as soon as it formed. He’d hold a screwdriver in his hand, spin it around in his fingers. “What do you think happens to Thomas if I get rid of you?” He holds the screwdriver so that the edge rests against Thomas’s temple. “Do you think he’s strong enough?”

Grant knew he wasn’t.

In a situation like that, there are layers of selfishness. Christian was always good at putting them in perspective. “You’re too weak to do what needs to be done, and he’ll be the one to suffer for it.” 

Grant did what needed to be done, and he memorized Thomas’s every bruise and cut, like landmarks on a map. Sometimes, when he had doubts about his mission, he’d pull up that map in his head. There are worse things in this world than bruises and cuts. Worse even than hairline fractures and needles under your nails. Ward hated weakness, but part of him—a shameful part of him that he’d tried to burn along with his childhood home—had hoped that people like Skye and Fitz and Simmons would never have to know about those things.

As the minutes crawl toward midnight, Ward’s heart starts to beat faster. A good agent can control things like that when the situation requires it—pulse, sweat, muscle tension. But the key to that isn’t just control over the body. These signs emerge from emotion. So, the best way to beat a lie detector test? Stop caring about the truth. Better yet, unlearn the meaning of the word. The world’s greatest liars don’t bury the truth. They dissolve it in an acid bath. 

Ward lies out on the bed, closes his eyes, puts his hand on his chest and wonders what emotion drives his heartbeat on, faster and faster. He’s never been good at identifying them. They exist in rich, complicated spectra, he’s been told. But the Wards have always been colorblind. 

A dissonant beat interrupts his concentration, a metallic sound out of sync with his heartbeat. Footsteps moving down the steel-reinforced stairs. It’s time.

Skye comes closer, he can hear it, but he doesn’t open his eyes yet. He likes this part. The dark. The anticipation. A change in the static electricity around him signals the deactivation of the electromagnetic barrier. Goosebumps rise and he shivers. That’s okay, too. If the job was easy, it wouldn’t be any fun, would it?

Fingertips hover over him, not quite touching his skin—only perceptible by the static electricity in the air, making the hair on his arms stand on end. And then those hands close around his wrists and she uses the grip to climb on top of him. That’s when he opens his eyes, locks his gaze with hers, sees her pupils blown. Either lust, or the fight-or-flight response. She chooses fight.

Everything happens blurry-fast. Clothes off—gloves off—knees on either side of his ribcage and one hand on his throat. The rhythm makes his heartbeat stutter, falter. He doesn’t thrust. He lets her control both their bodies. Nails and teeth and knuckles, the bare bones of it, rattling the bedframe, moving the whole apparatus across the floor. He realizes his eyes are squeezed shut again and he forces himself to open them. Skye, her lips pulled back to bare her teeth, eyes almost black, bright like onyx and focused on him so intensely it feels like heat on his face. The dark, expanding, taking, he can see himself reflected in her dilated eyes. _What do you see?_

Ward wakes with a gasp. 

Five a.m., like clockwork. Like every other day in his life when he wasn’t already awake at that hour.

Agent Morse steps forward from the shadows. “Nightmare, or…?”

“Nothing.” Ward shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

“I have to respond anytime your vitals go off like that, so would you please try not to have such intense dreams for a little while?”

Ward nods.

“Thank you.” Agent Morse resets her watch, turns off the light, and leaves him alone with the drying sweat and the cold, lightless space.

The world’s greatest liars don’t bury the truth. They disfigure it so badly that even they can’t recognize it anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> The dubious consent refers to three things--a memory of Ward losing his virginity when he was underage (dubious only because of his age), a reference to sex with Lorelei, which occurred when he was under her spell and therefore unable to give informed consent, and the description of sex between Ward and Skye, where his feelings about it are unclear. However, in the end, it is unclear if the sex has ever happened at all, or if he only imagines it. Because someone like him doesn't just have nice, simple sex fantasies.
> 
> The incident at the well is also described here, though not in graphic detail. In this version, Thomas actually died there. References to sibling abuse and child abuse are present. 
> 
> Please let me know if there's anything else I should warn for!


End file.
